Positions on Emancipation

Architecture between Aesthetics and Politics

During the last decades architecture has been largely characterized by a lack of strong positions. A form of neoliberal indifference has become endemic, something that can be attributed to the fact that modernism has lost its claim to be both emancipatory and educational. More recently though, one can again observe attitudes that claim to address architecture and urbanism as more engaged with the social and political effects of global capitalism.

This book relays a passionate debate between some of the most outstanding theoreticians and eloquent protagonists of this new attitude, leaving us with an overview of such postulated ambitions. Against the liberal “anything goes” and the revival of architectural autonomy, these attitudes believe less in the possibility for even the most experimental architectural object to have a changing effect on society. Their approaches instead vary from activism to the construction of new critical narratives.